Furin Chime Press™

Author: Michael Guest

  • Gunter Biosnip: Seeds of Brilliance

    Gunter Biosnip: Seeds of Brilliance

    A brief reflection on the theme of eugenics that Brian Armour identifies in Baron Montez, in his preface to Chapter One. Gunter was himself probably of “mixed race” to a modest degree. Legacies of British Slave-ownership, a web site of University College London, reports that his father, Henry Gunter (1813–1856), was born in Jamaica to a one-quarter African woman.

    Archibald Clavering Gunter would have been, if their research is correct, at least one-sixteenth African. I venture to suggest that such a “quantum” of blood might tend towards a sense of identification with – indeed, a celebration of – the minority cultural, and racial, heritage.

    With this in mind, Gunter’s reference to the polyracial “polyhaema drops” in the blood of Montez becomes a tantalizing issue; as does the nature of his identification with his anti-hero. Gunter is fond of Montez even while the narrator reviles him. Of course, as we know, Lucifer is far more appealing as a character than God in Milton’s Paradise Lost. How fitting Gunter’s phrase, “This little disciple of Satan” in the opening to Chapter Two, “A Toboga Breakfast in ’56“!

    The UCL web-page agrees with the short supply of biographical data in the literary overviews. Using New York and New Orleans passenger lists, it traces Henry Gunter three times across the Atlantic between 1838 and 1844, which evidences his alacrity as a merchant at the time.

    Henry Gunter married Elizabeth Agnes Sharples in Liverpool in 1839, and they had two sons, William Henry and Archibald Clavering. The family moved from Liverpool, first to New York in c. 1853, and soon after to San Francisco, where Henry became proprietor-manager of the “first conventional theater” to be built there, called the National. Archibald Clavering Gunter moved back to New York in 1879, after his variegated career (See Gunter Biosnip: Curse of Popularity).

    As with J.F. Smith in England, whose father also owned a theatre company, Gunter first wrote plays. When he was a child, his home in San Francisco boasted “an unusually large living room built expressly for the purpose of giving young Archie a theatre in which to produce his youthful dramas.” It was a stately residence, attesting to the entrepreneurial success his father enjoyed with the National Theater. The house had an entrance on Washington Street and at the back overlooked the lower, adjacent Taylor Street. From the porch of this house, the oldest on the hill, was “one of the finest vistas in San Francisco” (The Insider).

    San Francisco harbor c.1851

    Ella Sterling Mighels considers the first two of Gunter’s dramatic successes as too high up on the “literary plane” for popular success, though she and her milieu were impressed that a San Franciscan was able to produce writing of such a high tone. He soon realized that the “high plane goes a-begging” and retuned it to appeal for public tastes (p. 338).

    The sensation caused by his first novel, Mr Barnes of New York, gave him an inkling he might be able to make a go of it on the printed page. Following the trail of other Californian writers before him, he moved East in 1879 and achieved just that, making enough to set up his own Gunter’s Magazine and The Home Publishing Company. He produced a string of thirty-nine novels and “one of the most remunerative careers ever lived by a man who lived by his typewriter” (The Insider). Gunter’s contemporary, the Californian author Gertrude Atherton (1857–1948) writes in Cosmopolitan that:

    His books have been on every stand in three continents where our language is read, and by a large proportion of the reading public abroad he is regarded as the representative American author.

    Cited in Mighels, p. 339

    … his international popularity being facilitated by a busy industry of book pirating.

    Baron Montez (1893) comes at the height of Gunter’s momentum. It is not one of his most cited works, but was decently reviewed when it appeared, with particular reference to Gunter’s skill, and to his  polyhaemic anti-hero.

    Here are some excerpts:

    The work exhibits the wonderful resources of the author’s mind and the richness of his imaginative powers. The characters are forcibly drawn, the details worked up with surprising exactness, and the plot unraveled with scrupulous care…

    Although entirely a piece of fiction – good fiction, still under the surface may be found many direct hits at some of the social and political fads of the present day…

    His portrayal of the hero, Harry Larchmont, is excellent and will not only win the admiration of the fair sex, but also that of the men who admire a good athletic figure and a will power over which the Anglomaniac craze has no control.

    In the heroine, Miss Louise Ripley Minturn, we have one of those strong, sensitive characters, of the typical American girl – the girl to whom we raise our hat in honor, to her pluck, refinement and modesty; the girl who in the face of poverty and temptation will educate herself to meet the battle of life with a smile, and even though [sic] a typewriter, will assert her independence and uphold the greatest of all characters – the American woman.

    The central figure of the novel, however, is the all-nation prince of villains, Fernando Gomez Montez, mule boy of Cruces, self-ennobled to “Baron” Montez. As a villain he will challenge the admiration of all the readers. The conventional smooth, oily villain has been succeeded by an educated one, full of fascination, a good conversationalist, cunning and almost brave, a clear, quick-witted brain, working like fast revolving machinery, accurate in calculation, precise in detail, with a strong will and commanding power which fascinates all weaker natures first, and then causes them to obey…

    The scenes are panoramic in their changes, and carry the reader rapidly from the rushing restless, bustling city of New York to the drudgery and turmoil of the miasmic, fever-laden tropic isthmus, and thence to pleasure-loving, scheming Paris, the center of intrigue, gay life, inflated stocks, bonds, and feverish existence. The situations are very sensational and dramatic showing the author’s dramatic vein in the background of the novelistic landscape…

    Behymer, “Among the Authors” (1893)

    Chapter Three coming next week, edited and introduced by Brian Armour.

    Notes and References

    Behymer, H. “Among the Authors,” Los Angeles Herald, Volume 40, Number 40, 21 May 1893.

    Mighels, Ella Sterling, The Story of the Files: California Writers and Literature (Boston: Harvard U, 1893).

    The Insider. San Francisco Call, Volume 101, Number 90, 28 February 1907.

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  • Gunter Biosnip: Curse of Popularity

    Gunter Biosnip: Curse of Popularity

    The word “unenthusiastic” well encapsulates Gunter’s critical reception. Observe his appearance in a number of overviews of the history of American letters and theatre. In his Dictionary of American Authors (1899), Adams pronounces Gunter’s “popular sensational romances” as “quite destitute of literary merit” (161). In American Authors, 1600-1900 a Biographical Dictionary of American Literature; complete in one volume with 1300 biographies and 400 portraits (1938) Kunitz grudgingly acknowledges Gunter as the “most widely read American novelist” for a few years, before concluding that “[h]is work had little merit and is almost completely forgotten today” (323).

    We find with Gunter the same theme that comes up with J.F. Smith and Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.: how often preeminently successful writers in their own day – when viewed through the lens of their popularity – were pilloried critically. Indeed, specifically for an author to make a considerable income from his or her work, generally attracted derisive opinions about their literary value. In the shorter term, they were prejudged (as Emerson prejudged Cobb, Jr., without having read him.) In the longer, their perceived shortcomings magnified, they were no longer read, for their unjustly disvalued reputations preceded them.

    This effect is particularly pronounced in encyclopedic coverages of the kind I mentioned in opening, because the compilers and editors have no opportunity to read the corpora of every single author they cover. Rather, they must distil the critical accounts of popular authors such as Gunter. Even though literally masses of readers celebrated him, what mostly remains is the critical taint.

    Hence, far more recently than the overviews I mentioned, in their Oxford Companion to American Theatre (2004), Bordman and Hischak find that

    [Gunter‘s] two dozen produced plays were generally perceived as lacking in real merit, but theatrically effective.

    p. 280

    Traditionally – and to some extent in the present day –theatre was considered a “lower” artistic form than literature. Only by extracting the words from the dramatic context, the theatrical occasion, can they attain to transcendence and timelessness. One truly appreciates Shakespeare, not by seeing a play, but by reading him on the page. Gunter’s play is merely “theatrically effective.” I don’t know quite how, but somehow Gunter must produce his play’s theatrical effectiveness from out of thin air rather than from his writing, which is obviously very poor, according to the remnants of critical account.

    Consider Bordman and Hischak’s verdict on Gunter’s early box office success, Fresh, the American (1881): a “loosely contrived farce” that nevertheless “provided [its leading man] with a major hit for two years” (245). And again, their description of another of Gunter’s successful plays, Two Nights in Rome (1872), as “a crude but powerful drama” (280). Note yet again the persistence of the dual description, and how “crude” tends to outweigh “powerful” in the impression it leaves regarding his literary talent — and a reader’s orientation towards his books..

    Their ambivalence betrays their instinct to avoid the taint of a literary elitism that bolsters the structures of the traditional canon. One mainstay is a perceived opposition between “merit” and “popularity.” Hence this “crude but powerful” each-way bet. The play lacks some ephemeral quality that marks true literature, despite, or because of its “vulgar” mass appeal. On the other hand, Adams, writing more than a century before them viewed a “popular sensational romance” as crossing a line drawn in filth.

    Archibald Clavering Gunter, in King, Notable New Yorkers of 1896–1899

    Understandably, canonical-critical preconceptions pervade the institution of publishing. Gunter wrote his first novel, Mr. Barnes of New York (1887), in response to a dare by a friend: “I bet you couldn’t put me into a book and make me interesting” (San Francisco Call, Volume 101, Number 90, 28 February 1907). Hart, in his The Popular Book: a History of America’s Literary Taste (1950), describes the novel as “awkwardly written.” This implies he has read it; but of course, it could only have been awkwardly written to have been so roundly rejected for publication.

    I don’t mean to suggest that the book may not in one way or another be considered awkwardly written—many are. Its awkwardness was clearly not, however, a defining characteristic that prevented the novel from providing immense pleasure for millions of people who actually did read it.

    According to a celebratory account in the San Franciso Call, written the week after Gunter died in Chicago in 1907:

    [Mr. Barnes of New York] was offered to most of the publishers in the country, and not one would consider it, so the author finally decided to publish it himself. It came out in 1886, and was not a best seller at once. Indeed, it fell as flat as the proverbial pancake, but one copy being sold on the first day of publication. Within seven months, however, it was selling at the rate of nearly 3500 a day,

    … ultimately to the tune of three million copies (Burt, p. 271).

    The astute obituarist views the issue of Gunter’s “literary merit”:

    Archibald Clavering Gunter’s works will never be considered literature. He lived a generation too soon; he never became one of the “six best sellers” because his books always sold in greater numbers than the “Six Best” ever dared to.

    It would have been laughable for Gunter’s cheap yellowbacks ever to make it into the Bookman’s bestseller list. The “Six Best” would have found it equally ludicrous to leap from literary grace in pursuit of such spectacular popular acclaim, even if they were able to.

    Notes and References

    Adams, Oscar F. A Dictionary of American Authors (Boston: Houghton & MIfflin, 1899).

    Burt, Daniel S (ed.) The Chronology of American Literature: America’s Literary Achievements from the Colonial Era to Modern Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004).

    Bordman, G. and Hischak, T.S, Oxford Companion to American Theatre (2004). 3d ed. (NY: OUP, 2004)

    Hart, J.D, The Popular Book: a History of America’s Literary Taste (NY: OUP, 1950).

    King, Moses. Notable New Yorkers of 1896–1899, NY: King, 1899.

    Kunitz, American Authors, 1600-1900: A Biographical Dictionary of American Literature; complete in one volume with 1300 biographies and 400 portraits (1938).

    Sorenson, Alan T., “Bestseller Lists and Product Variety,” Journal of Industrial Economics, 55.4, Dec. 2007 (pp. 715–38).

    “The Insider”, San Francisco Call, Volume 101, Number 90, 28 February 1907.

    © 2020 Furin Chime, Michael Guest

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez of Panama and Paris

    A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez of Panama and Paris

    Prepare to embark on an idiosyncratic taste thrill, another foray into the paradoxically expanding universe of vanishing literature. This bestselling author-playwright, said to have been better known in his day than his contemporary, Mark Twain (1835-1910), is now reduced to fragments, trivial contributions to popular culture: Played middle-man in the rise of the great American baseball poem “Casey at the Bat” – sometimes referred to as the best known poem in the United States. Authored a novel on which A Florida Enchantment (1914) was based, ancestor of lesbian-transgender films.

    Archibald Clavering Gunter (1847-1907) was born in Liverpool, England, taken by his parents to San Francisco when he was six, and grew up there, before moving to New York to become a playwright, after building careers in rail and mining engineering, chemistry and stockbroking. Something of the thrill and spectacle of that six-year-old Liverpudlian’s trans-Atlantic voyage surely took permanent root in his imagination, given the extensive output he managed to generate even after such patently anti-literary occupations. Actually, he wrote his first play, Found a True Vein (1872), about life in a mining camp, while still working as an engineer.

    Baron Montez of Panama and Paris (1893) is a rags-to-riches story, like other of Gunter’s novels propelled by a dynamic of character and place. We can compare with titles of his such as  Mr. Barnes of New York (1888), Mr. Potter of Texas (1891), Don Balasco of Key West (1897), and the intriguing Miss Nobody of Nowhere (1890). Intriguing indeed, as Harlequin Romance author Elizabeth Ashton must have thought in 1933 when writing her novel Miss Nobody from Nowhere.

    But where are places as plentiful in such possibilities of drama and exotica as Panama and Paris – especially in that exciting era of massive change and aspiration, of explorers, prospectors, swindlers and tycoons? We wonder already about Gunter’s representation of the burgeoning Americas and Americana upon a global stage.

    Panama Dancers (1910-11), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. (North Carolina Musuem of Art)

    Shady Señor Fernando Montez starts out as a seedy muchacho in a bamboo shack on Toboga Island. These are portentous times, however, preceding the building of a great canal to link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and hence the two hemispheres of the globe, a dream only intensified by the discovery of Californian gold. Montez’ ascent can be limited only by his own hubris, and Gunter’s imagination.

    The French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had developed the Suez Canal in 1869, attempted a repeat performance in Panama during the years 1881-89 but went bankrupt. The Compagnie Nouvelle du Canal de Panama again tried unsuccessfully in 1894. Gunter’s novel is, therefore, quite contemporaneous with the world depicted in it. One anticipates a taste of the authentic flavour of the times—the authentic zeitgeist, good and ill.

    In Gunter’s own estimation, his were “the most successful novels ever published” (Hart 189). Well, we’ve heard that sort of thing before, and it depends which way you’re looking at it. Nevertheless, if not for literary brilliance or a polished style, he is acknowledged for bringing American and European attitudes into a comparative focus and for the immense popularity of his

    …long line of yellow-backed novels, soon to be seen in innumerable hammocks, summer resorts, excursion boats, Pullman Palace cars, or wherever else Americans moved for dreams and escape.

    Hart 188

    Brian Armour will edit the chapters and provide reflective, contextual prefaces. Brian is the author of a stunningly good science fiction novel, Future Crime (2015), with a further brilliant novel and book of short stories coming out soon.

    Reference

    Hart, J.D.,The Popular Book: a History of America’s Literary Taste (NY: OUP, 1950).

  • Cobb Biosnip: Laborare est orare

    Cobb Biosnip: Laborare est orare

    Knowing nothing of Sylvanus Cobb Jr’s work, let alone the writer himself, Emerson did not realize the offense his remarks would have caused Cobb’s brother (see “Cobb Biosnip: No Yellowbacks“). In her memoir, Sylvanus’ daughter Ella Waite Cobb omits to mention which brother it was. Sylvanus Jr., the eldest, had six (one of whom had died at ten years of age) as well as two sisters.

    Cobb’s immediate family was definitely among the most righteous and upstanding in the United States, and would have taken great umbrage at the idea that Cobb’s writing was mere vulgar sensationalism.

    The novelist’s father, Reverend Sylvanus Cobb, D.D. (1799-1866), a Massachusetts clergyman, is described as “the most important Universalist reformer before the Civil War” (Harris 117). In 1839 he founded the Christian Freeman, an influential anti-slavery, pro-temperance religious publication, and was active in seeking reform.

    His wife, Eunice Hale Waite Cobb (1803-80) was a  public speaker in support of temperance and social welfare. She contributed articles and poetry to Universalist publications, and was the first woman ever to do so. In Boston, she founded the first woman’s club in America, one dedicated to health and fitness, the Ladies’ Physiological Institute (1848-1996).

    Eunice Hale Waite Cobb. Source: Wikimedia Commons

    The prodigious Cobb twins were as industrious. Cyrus Cobb was an accomplished mathematician, lawyer, writer, poet, sculptor and musician. Darius Cobb achieved fame as a painter, and was, as well, a noted “musician, singer, poet, lecturer, lithographer, and art critic” (“Darius Cobb“, Wikipedia).

    Virtual doppelgangers, the two were not only identical in appearance, but also in intellect, personality, tastes and abilities. Darius said, after Cyrus’ death that:

    No person could tell the difference between our photographs, and very few between our persons. If he were to deliver a lecture, I could step in and fill his place exactly. If I were conducting music, he could take up my baton at any point and carry it out to the end, and no one could see the difference. If either were to play the violin, the other could substitute for him absolutely.

    “The Cobb Brothers,” Cambridge Tribune, 18 April, 1903

    Reverend Cobb’s adherence to Freemasonry was concomitant with his family’s extraordinary allegiance to hard work, if not fundamental to it. He was the founding chaplain of the first lodge instituted in Boston, after a period of anti-Masonic agitation, against which he worked vehemently, and of course, tirelessly. In his capacity as a member of State Legislature, he saved the Freemasons from abolition in Massachusetts.

    Of the sons who followed him into the organization, including the twins, Sylvanus Jr. is the best remembered by the fraternity:

    He served as Worshipful Master of the Lodge for five years. He was also a member of Norfolk Chapter, Royal Arch Mason and served as High Priest, a member of Hyde Park Council Royal & Select Masters serving as Thrice Illustrious Master and Cyprus Commandery Knights Templar where he was the Eminent Commander.

    “Today in Masonic History: Sylvanus Cobb, Jr. passes away,” Masonrytoday.com
    Knights Templar seal. Latin motto translates to “Seal of the Soldiers of Christ” (Source: Png Guru; reproduction permitted)

    It is a tenet of Freemasonry that, in emulating the example of God as the grand architect of the universe, men are the makers of themselves, and that

    to labor well and truly, to labor honestly and persistently, is the object and chief end of all humanity.

    Mackey

    Laborare est orare. After the wisdom of the monks of the Middle Ages, Freemasons hold that labour is itself a mode of worship (Mackey).

    Cast in this mould, Cobb and his family would have considered his writing as humanitarian service, far from the low realm of the yellowback; rather, a manifestation of uplifting and formative moral values. And prime among these values, the noble aim of living by the sweat of one’s brow.

    Cobb uses Masonic symbolism overtly in some works. The Caliph of Baghdad is listed in the Encyclopedia of Freemasonry as “the most widely read of Masonic novels” and is reputedly a vault of Masonic symbolism, “all of which is instantly recognisable to Masons who have been exalted to the Royal Arch Degree.” The novels Alaric,  The Mystic Tie of the Temple (evidently an earlier title of the Caliph of Baghdad) and The Keystone were published in the New York Ledger, from 1858 to 1874 (Mackey).

    Following the examples of his mother and father, Cobb actively supported social reform in the areas of slavery, suffrage and temperance. He first addressed anti-slavery meetings in 1852, and in 1864 was elected president of a Union League he had helped establish. After the commencement of the civil war, he was made Captain of a light infantry company of the Maine Volunteer Militia, but saw no active service (Ella Waite Cobb, A Memoir…).

    In the temperance publication The Rechabite, of which he was editor, he draws on his recent experience on an American man-of-war:

    The very foundation upon which rests its present mode of operation, is RUM! This may be deemed, by some, an unwarrantable assertion; but we say it calmly and understandingly — we have been there, and we know.

    Rechabite 1846-7; qtd. A Memoir…

    Cobb’s quiet subtext, by which he seems to acknowledge a demon of his own, is borne out subtly in his daughter’s memoir. She records how in 1869, he became a member of the Sons of Temperance, an organization for temperance and mutual support, for whom he lectured:

    He cherished a warm admiration for the man who could stand firm in the face of temptation and say No; and he had reason to do so; but also, from the depths of his heart, he had reason to sympathize with the man who could not always resist temptation. His own struggle extended from boyhood to death. One enemy ever hovered near him, and was ever ready for the fray. At times the battle turned against him, and a cloud, black and ominous, enshrouded him: but he never failed to rise to the light.

    A Memoir…

    Notes and References

    • Cobb’s immediate family: “The Cobb family was a large and important New England clan (see Philip Cobb’s A History of the Cobb Family, Cleveland:1907). The main branch of the Cobb family descended from Ebenezer and Elizabeth Cobb, both of whom were descended from Elder Henry Cobb who arrived in America on the second voyage of the Mayflower.” “Cobb Family Papers“. Syracuse University Libraries, Special Collections Research Center.
    • saved the Freemasons from abolition: See, for example, Cobb, Autobiography
    • Union League: “…also called Loyal League, in U.S. history, any of the associations originally organized in the North to inspire loyalty to the Union cause during the American Civil War. During Reconstruction, they spread to the South to ensure Republicans of support among newly enfranchised blacks.” Encyclopedia Britannica.
    • Rechabite: “(in the Bible) a member of an Israelite family, descended from Rechab, who refused to drink wine or live in houses (Jer. 35). /
      a member of the Independent Order of Rechabites, a benefit society of teetotallers, founded in 1835″ (Lexico.com)

    Cobb, Ella Waite. A Memoir of Sylvanus Cobb, Jr. (Boston: C.L. Peters and Son, 1891).

    Cobb, Sylvanus. Autobiography of the first forty-one years of the life of Sylvanus Cobb, D. D., to which is added a memoir, by his eldest son, Sylvanus Cobb, jr. (Boston: Universalist Publishing House, 1867). Jump to file at Internet Archive.

    Harris, Mark W. The A to Z of Unitarian Universalism (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2009).

    Heimbichner, C. and Adam Parfrey. Ritual America: Secret Brotherhoods and their Influence on American Society: a Visual Guide. (n.p.: Feral House, 2012). Entry on Caliph of Baghdad.

    Mackey, Albert G. The Symbolism of Freemasonry Illustrating and Explaining its Science and Philosophy, its Legends, Myths and Symbols (South Carolina: Albert G. Mackey, 1882). Available at guttenberg.org. Jump to file.

    “Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and its Kindred Sciences.” phoenixmasonry.org. Jump to page.

    “Records of the Ladies’ Physiological Institute, 1848-1996.” Hollis Archives, Harvard U.

    Further reading, reference
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  • Cobb Biosnip: No Yellowbacks

    Cobb Biosnip: No Yellowbacks

    Some years after Cobb began writing for the New York Ledger, Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered a public lecture in East Boston. The honour of introducing him happened to fall to one of Cobb’s brothers. On the subject of modern literature, Emerson made a contemptuous mention of “yellow-covered literature of the Sylvanus Cobb, Jr. stamp.”

    He was referring to so-called “sensational literature,” as opposed to substantial matter. “To what base uses we put this ineffable intellect! To reading all day murders & railroad accidents, & choosing patterns for waistcoats & scarves,” he wrote in his journal of May 1852. The social critic Charles Eliot Norton voiced his similar dismay a few years later in reference to popular publications, which he considered to be consumed by

    a horde of readers who seek in them […] the gratification of a vicious taste for strong sensations; who enjoy the coarse stimulants of personalities and scandal, and have no appetite for any sort of proper intellectual nourishment.

    “The Intellectual Life of America” (1888)

    The term “yellowback” was imported from Britain, where it was used to denote cheap, sensational railway novels; these appeared as a result of reciprocal developments in mass printing technology and the evolution of a reading public. In 1840s America, speculative “yellowback publishers” arose who, unrestricted by international copyright law, were able to pirate the British works. Cutthroat operators, these companies managed to put each other out of business before long, in a melee of price-cutting. Subsequent publishers, however, continued to produce cheap, paperbound editions, such as paperbacks and dime novels (West, 788-9).

    Typical yellowback cover image (1899). Source: Yellowback Cover Art, Flickr

    But back to East Boston, where at the end of the meeting, Cobb’s brother approached the lecturer. Cobb’s daughter resumes the narrative in her memoir:

    ‘Mister Emerson, did you ever read one of Mr. Cobb’s stories?’

    ‘No, sir!’ with a tone and look that implied that such a question was almost an insult.

    ‘And do you think it just and honest to hold up one of the most popular writers of the day as a representative of a certain class of objectionable literature, when, as you confess, you have never read a line of his work?’

    After some further conversation, Mr. Emerson said:–

    ‘Well, I confess that I may have erred in this matter in relying too much upon impressions, and I promise that the remark to which you object shall not be repeated until I am able to judge for myself whether or not it is just. I will read one of Mr. Cobb’s stories at my earliest opportunity. What one shall I read?’

    ‘It makes no difference,’ said Mr. Cobb; ‘select any of them and read.’

    About three months after this the two gentlemen met in the little den of Mr. James T. Fields, in the famous Old Corner Bookstore. After a mutually cordial greeting, and a few general words, Mr. Emerson looked Mr. Cobb in the face with a frank smile, and said:–

    ‘By the way, Mr. Cobb, according to promise I have read one of your brother’s novels, and I have ascertained that it is a fair representative of all his stories. While it is not in my line of reading, I confess that when once I had begun it I could not leave it unfinished. And it will be sufficient for me to say to you that I have never, since that East Boston lecture, nor can I ever again, hold up the stories of Mr. Cobb as an illustration of yellow-covered or merely sensational literature. In sentiment and language that story was not only unobjectionable, but elevating.’

    Ella Waite Cobb, A Memoir…

    High praise from a luminary of American letters, the man whom Nietzsche called “the most fertile author of this century” (qtd. Ratner-Rosenhagen, 5).

    One could quibble with Emerson over his use of “yellow-covered,” given that even at this quite established stage in Cobb’s career, with scores of serialized novels behind him, he had actually published barely any books as such. From the pen of the most prolific novelist in history, his daughter tells us, issued just one single book, which was “a memoir of his father, a duodecimo of four hundred and fifty pages, written in 1866” (A Memoir).

    The reason underlying this ironical circumstance is that Robert Bonner, his New York Ledger publisher, strictly maintained the rights to all Cobb’s work, for subsequent republication in the serial format. Cobb saw none of his novels in book form until late in life. His best known work, The Gunmaker of Moscow, his first contribution to the Ledger, serialized in 1856 — a novel that became almost as popular as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin — did not appear in book form till 1888 (Hart, 99, 809).

    Apart from the obstacle to his “pet scheme” of publishing an actual book (see A Memoir 261), Cobb had no reason to complain, perfectly satisfied as he was with his agreement with Bonner. The contract required him to produce a “novelette every eight weeks and a minimum of two short pieces in a week”, and provided him with $50 per week for the next thirty years. A most satisfactory and indeed lucrative arrangement for “the first American one-man fiction factory” (Ljungquist 83).

    References

    Cobb, Ella Waite. A Memoir of Sylvanus Cobb, Jr. Boston, 1891.

    Hart, J.D. The Popular Book: A History of America’s Literary Taste (NY: 1950, OUP).

    Ljungquist, K.P. ed. Bibliography of American Fiction Through 1865 (NY: Facts on File, 1994).

    Norton, C. E. “The Intellectual Life of America”, The New Princeton Review 6 (1888) 312–324 (318). Available here on the Internet Archive.

    Ratner-Rosenhagen. J. American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2012).

    West, J. “Twentieth-century publishing and the rise of the paperback,” in Cambridge History of the American Novel, Vol. 3, 1860-1920, ed. Leonard Cassuto et al. (Cambridge: CUP, 2011).

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